Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve are shaping up for what is promising to be one of the summer’s best releases (album The Soft Bounce due soon). I’ve already posted the beauteous single and remix of Diagram Girl. The follow up, Creation, has vocals from Jane Weaver and Hannah Peel and has been remixed and stretched out here by Psychemagik in a lovely, percussive and spaced out manner.

Drew and I agreed on Twitter the other night that Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve’s own re-animation of their recent single Diagram Girl is a thing of beauty, one of those records that sounds like summer should. Six and a half minutes of wobbly bass, washes of synth, blissed out vox and hazy modern dance-oriented psychedelia. Just wonderful stuff from Richard Norris and Erol Alkan with an album to follow.

If you like that you should go find Richard Norris’ other current project, Circle Sky (a duo with Martin Dubka), and a 12″ called Reveal/Interstellar, two massive sounding cuts recorded live using the Moog System 55 modular- analogue acid house achieving lift off for 2016. Annoyingly there don’t seem to be any full length listens anywhere but these two preview clips give you enough to be going on with.

This is shaping up to be a good few weeks for new music- here’s a dreamy new song from Beyond The Wizards’s Sleeve (Misters Richard Norris and Erol Alkan) with an album to follow. A slow and stoned vocal over washes of synths and skittering drums. Woozy, like Spacemen 3 but without the paranoia. Very nice indeed.

I’m caught in an electronics groove right now and this is blindingly good. Recent postee Daniel Avery remixed by Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve team of Norris and Alkan. After a slow, hazy intro everything suddenly snaps into sharp focus- like a beam of white light trained right between the eyes… and then it all becomes very t-r-i-p-p-y indeed. There’s some old school electro in here to, to keep you moving.

Here’s a round up of a few things from 2014 as the year dribbles to its conclusion. I missed this from earlier this year; a Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve re-imagining of New Energy, in three phases- some 60s backwards psychedelia followed by the more familiar beat driven techno and then the wonderful drone section. There’s loads more Avery stuff, remixes, radio sessions and so on, at his Soundcloud page.

There’s also the trippy Roman Flugel remix of All I Need which has all the right things in all the right places.

Underworld’s dubnobasswithmyheadman was 20 years old and the re-issued box set was 2014’s possibly best bet if you were buying just one big box of music you already own. It cemented in my mind the view that dubnobass… was the best album of the 90s.

The stand out music book of 2014 was Viv Albertine’s autobiography Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys. Totally honest, warm and funny, uncomfortable in parts but fascinating and written entirely in the present tense which gave it real immediacy. If you haven’t read it, you should read it.

And I’m just beginning to listen to FKA Twigs. There’s something going on here…